The latest evolution is Android’s Material Design – flat design 2.0 if you will. This is where flat truly shines: in circumstances where you need to perform an action fast, without any additional decoration or embellishments. The relative small screen sizes don’t allow intricate and highly detailed touches.

When we’re using our phones or tablets, we want to perform an action fast and then move on to the next thing. This is why Material Design will rock our Android mobile experience. It will become the standard because it allows you to get more done in less time. That’s why it feels so natural.

We’ve established this is where mobile devices are certainly heading, but how about the rest? Unless you’re a designer specifically focused on mobile UI and UX, you might be jumping on a wagon that’s headed to a dead-end.

2. Flat design requires less skill

And that’s the truth. It’s not easy – don’t get me wrong – but when you compare flat design to its now neanderthal brother, skeuomorphism, you quickly understand the difference in skill that’s required.

As you can imagine these require a lot more attention to detail, knowledge and experience. And these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so many incredible galleries out there that you may end up wanting to uninstall Photoshop and become a plumber.

Designs like this are what I looked up to when I got started as a designer. The amount of skill required baffled me. It intrigued me. And most importantly, it motivated me. I worked hard everyday and I strived to be able to create something that looked even close to this.

3. Flat design can’t be mastered

Today, designers see flat style everywhere. Since it’s so requested by clients, that’s what they focus on. They don’t work on perspectives, shadow depth or reflections. Instead they create the same old icon sets, sites and interfaces.

I’m not trying to take anything away from flat design. That’s why I mentioned that I liked it from the get-go. Yet I worry designers will stop practicing and improving their craft by jumping on this trend, finding out too late that there’s no depth to it (pun intended).

It will never be an end goal that you aspire to reach after years and years of hard work and refinement. Try your hand at skeuomorphism and you’ll find that it’s a challenge that can never be replaced. Not the style itself, but in the continual pursuit of perfection.

The author

Barin Cristian Doru aka 'thislooksgreat' is an experienced web designer and proud member of the 99designs community: http://99designs.com/people/thislooksgreat
Besides creating awesome website designs, he is also an entrepreneur, an Android App Developer and a content creator. His work ranges from freebie PSD files to small tips & tricks in Photoshop, all the way to a premium 16 hour long course on how to succeed on 99designs.

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Alive285

Jan 6 2015

I personally hate flat design. I mean, I get that it’s cleaner and I understand putting function and usability first, but it’s just so damn boring. I don’t get it. As someone who’s designed for the internet since 2000, flat design just seems like such a step backward. I like texture and shadows and gradients (albeit ones that are tastefully done and not ones reflective of the gif-obsessed, drop-shadowed internet puberty period) and when you strip those all away, everything just seems so dull and lifeless. It often LOOKS like it was thrown together quickly, even when it’s not. We stare at flat screens all day and the fact that the design trend is now flat, too, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like a progression, at least not in the direction I want to go in. I’m all for simple and functionally clear, but I don’t see why we have to flatten our design elements to achieve that. That’s just my opinion…

That’s a great counter example. McD really dropped the ball. I wouldn’t say I hate it, I quite enjoy it in certain circumstances, but I’d say it’s misused a lot.

Karpfen

Jan 6 2015

Little remark,
the former bag-design is also a “flat”-design. It’s more detailed and colourfull but it is flat (search for gradient, shadows etc.).
The new design is “only” badly reduced, but this is not the fault of “flat-design-philosophy”, looks more like an accident. 🙂

Beko

Jan 6 2015

Alive285, you have the right to express your idea as we all perceive things variously… 🙂 But, as you pointed out taking things a bit retrospectively, the web design style used more than a decade ago was not even close to nowadays trendy flat nature. I have been doing design work since 2000 and the evolution in design has changed immensely that currently finds itself in a world of flat designs associated by flat colors. I take it you are an experienced designer, at this juncture, please do not intermingle the colors and design styles used 14 years ago to current flat ones. Gradients started to be used ever since and it escalated to a more shiny colors a few years after, namely they were defined as heavy graphic. Many clients keep loving them to date because they are just clients, not designers. So, I am begging you not fall into clients’ PARTY in case you are doing design work 😉
Additionally, bear in mind that current flat colors are more dusty (and not shiny) that replicate a vintage style with modern twists. These colors fit perfectly with flat designs in general. This is the level of current flat design we are talking about, and not the one’s of early 2000 as the difference is vast from designer’s point of view. Personally, gradients, shiny colors, shadows and certain complexities are nothing but building an exhausted mind for users. A design has its own principles: SIMPLE, CLEAN, FLAT (both in design and colors with smart combination using the respective nuances), and being PSYCHOLOGICALLY RELAXING. With the above-mentioned, art doesn’t stop here; not a cul de sac. But for now, flat is something that is much better than the past designs. Just an opinion 😉

Thank you for your very detailed response. I should clarify my criticism. I guess it’s not exactly flat DESIGN I dislike but rather flat GRAPHICS, you know, ones that look like line drawings scanned from coloring books that are either left that way or digitally colored with solid colors (the McDonald’s burger I linked to below is the perfect example of what I’m not particularly a fan of). It just seems so lazy, even though I know it’s not and is actually the result of a lot of thought, hard work and discussions. These kind of graphics certainly have their place in the design world, don’t get me wrong; I have seen them done well and like you I prefer the more muted, “dusty” colors. But, when the more textured, 3D alternative would look better (in my opinion), I don’t understand why the flat design is used instead. I saw a website once where the background was a landscape of mountains, but because the graphics were designed “flat” (solid colors, no 3D, texture or gradient to them at all), it looked – I don’t know – chiseled or something, like the surface of a diamond. It just looked odd to me. These flat design graphics feel like an evolution from pixel graphics, where the pixels can now be all kinds of shapes, not just square, you know what I mean?

And don’t think I’m trying to intermingle design styles from 15 years ago to now; I certainly didn’t mean design should reflect the way things used to look, but I don’t think abandoning a little texture or gradient is the answer (for some flat designers, that seems to be). I’m all for making things cleaner and more simple, but I don’t think stripping some or all of the elements away that can give graphics character, for the sake of making them easier for people to mentally digest is a good reason. Maybe if the design was for a company website that provided some kind of service, then yes, cleaner, flatter design elements would be preferable to eliminate any unnecessary mental work for consumers and make the experience and process as smooth as possible. But, the majority of the clients I’ve personally worked with over the years haven’t been corporate entities or service providers, so maybe I’m just not familiar enough with or have the design style to work with companies/people like that. The clients I’ve always worked for come to me because they want to provide their fans/customers/followers with an online experience, not just a website, so I’m always allowed a lot of design “leg room” to incorporate elements that provide character or visual stimulation and nothing more.

But, my rambling aside, I don’t think it’s flat design I have a problem with, but rather flat graphics when they’re done for seemingly no other reason than to make things easier for the designer, if that makes sense. Thank you again for your response.

Beko

Jan 6 2015

I thoroughly understand your point and love the topic ideas shared around here 😉 Since I am recently biased to solely flat design, your expansion to various approaches in design is unquestionably acceptable. I really love what you are trying to combine with these 😉 Might be the imminent next level in design, who knows 😉 Out of any discrepancy, I just support the current flat design that is still breathing and continue to be used in 2015 or maybe even the year after. Sorry am not good predicting the future LOL, but just seeing that ‘flat’ is kind of dissipating at snail’s pace. Thanks for giving it a second shot bringing your opinion out of the mist 😉

Karpfen

Jan 6 2015

I think it depends on the use of Design. These seuomorphistic designs above are great artworks, but imagine the user interface of camera raw as a (pseudo)realistc view of a camera and its userelements and you have to push screw and turn the elements with your mouse. I think it will drive you mad.(it’s reality in a lot of audio-software), A 3-D, goldshiny, bling-blang logo with gradients, shadows and so on will not work in 10pixel-logos or stamps. For Logos I think you first have to “think flat and simple” and then put the “bling-bling” on it if it is realy nessecary.
So I think that “flat vs. realistic” is not a question of skills or designphilosophy. It’s a question of “how to use” a certain design.
By the way, it is also not easy to create a simple “flat” unique and (this is the main issue) working design. Look around on this platform and you will see what I mean. 🙂
Greetings
der Karpfen

As a student and entry level designer, I have had the opportunity to engage in a broad range of techniques in both flat and skeuomorphic design principles. I believe to have a strong foundation in skeuomorphic design first compliments your ability to create dynamic flat design. For example, take a second look at the flat design science icons above. The icons embody everything about flat design: clean, simple and easily decipherable. It is clearly understood from these icons that the artist has implicated her knowledge of layering and depth relevant to the intended shadowing. Flat design is not detrimental to the ability of designers’, rather it could actually exemplify a designers’ skeuomoprhic knowledge, depending on experience.

As a client, it looks like cheap clip-art. Boring and naive.
I do understand the value for touch screen applications but things like the McDonalds example show how it can be taken too far.
Hopefully it is a fad that will fade away soon.

Flat design means that most icons don’t have shadows or shading or “buttons”–so if that white “edit” icon is over a white background, or a white image, you just don’t see it. That’s not “function over form”, that’s “form over function”. Unless and until a flat design utilizes negatives of the underlying colors (like good old “inverse mouse pointer” way oh way back in Windows 95) flat design is far from “usability first”.

If it doesn’t work on black background, on white background, on cluttered or simple, if it doesn’t support any of a wide range (as would a button or a dropshadow), then that icon or button simply doesn’t stand out as it should. Flat design is a nightmare AS A USER, and one I can’t wait to see die off.

Those science “icons” are some of the best examples of how imensly bad flat design and “trendy” designers can be. I see this same colour scheme in Google and Android.

1) I counted 7 colours in them. SEVEN! (8 if you count white). In this age of colourful, ultra HD screens, we have 7 colour icons. What, 1991 EGA monitors are back?
– That red, if you can call it that, lacks any life and beauty in it whatsoever and is utterly boring. Red being a colour that invokes passion and sexyness, mind you. But this is like drinking warm Coke with no bubbles left. *Yuch!*
– That green/blue colour “thing”, what is that supposed to be?
– The yellow-pus, enough said. I guess real yellow or orange were too beautiful.
– The light blue, is just so light that almost evaporates specially against white. It hadn’t to be so light, in part because the other blue is so dark.

2) The shapes, some are better than others, but that globe with it’s meridian lines is horrible

3) Colour repetition, because of only a handful of them, harms the identification of similar icons. Coherence, right?

4) Still, I can see some detail in those shapes. Google shapes are even simpler, and of course, even worse.

The Trophy/medal icons, despite having even less colours, at least they look a bit better due to a better pallete.
UIs and icons don’t have to have everything thrown in it, but they have to have something to catch our attention, even if only a small almost translucent shadow, or a subtle gradient. Or even a an elegant and unexpected animation in mouse-hovering if that’s the case. But something. Otherwise it isn’t clean, it’s just empty, devoid of interest, undeserving of our attention, it almost gets unnoticed.

That’s why I like IOS almost-flatness better, because it still has some subtle and tastefull gradients, micro-shadows in some icons, and vivid colours. Because an interface, as much as being useful and not getting in the way, it has to be appealing too, making us wanting to push that icon. It’s not perfect (the game and photos icons make no sense), but is better than many out there.

For instance take the Safari icon:
cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/safari-icon-ios.jpg
the shades of blue are lush, like looking at a pool, the sea or a caribbean luxury resort; the red is vivid, screaming “I’m the North”, evokes liveliness, function like the needle is working perfectly. Now imagine that icon with the red and blue from this science icons flat colour set. It would look embalmed, or dead (and decaying, judging by those awful colours)

Note to designers: You may try to shove this down our throaths all you want, many of us will never like it, and as all fads it will die away, and then the “coolness” and “function” it supposedly evoked will reveal it’s true placebo effect.

We don’t need icons designed by colour-challenged kindergarten kids. It’s lazy, ugly, boring, and tiring, and one doesn’t need to be a designer to draw those (so, you know, you risk being out of job).
If you want flat so much, at the very least put in there better colours with a wider palette, and some subtle gradients like the safari example will never hurt.

Flat design may have some use in smartwatches since the screen is so small, or in road signs were drivers really have to understand things at a glance, but not much else, certainly not in smarphones, tablets even less, and god forbid, desktops.

Otherwise, what’s next, the abolishing of icons and we just use text buttons?
Beauty in all things is also essential.

I don’t understand how the flat design is quicker, if these companies all had a standard set of icons yeah that would be great, but honestly they’re implementing so much new flat crap that I can’t even tell what buttons are which and if its even a link anymore, it is so fucking boring like Apple’s App Store is a blank white piece of paper that pulls up fucking words with absolutely nothing else to it

Try print other styles … Well I personally believe that concentrating at one style and do it to perfection is a good thing since you are good at that. There is no point in working in 100 styles and not mastering one of them. You can master flat then you can try other things. Flat it’s all about thinking made simple while other complex styles are about making things look as much glossy as you can… That is my opinion.

Flat design hurts, literally. Just as you said, it works great on mobile. On desktop, however, it “bleeds” within forms such as found in your standard office products. If you have an astigmatism or any other minor vision impairment such as nearsighted or farsighted vision, the lack of contrast makes icons, highlights, and fields difficult to distinguish.

I have an astigmatism (focusing takes slightly longer than average) and flat design is giving me headaches, especially in Excel where I’ll mark various fields in various ways. I miss Office 2010. The jeweled look (skeuomorphism) was perfect! I guess that was the pinnacle and now we’re regressing…

Funny you said that…I just stumbled on this and also baffled at the lack of comments here. Flat design is a pox on the design community. I find a huge disconnect on sites like Twitter where on iOS I get gorgeous emoticons with shadows, highlights, gradients, added details etc. but the same ones on desktop lack any personality whatsoever.

Spike

Jan 6 2015

I have to agree. Skeumorphism is what attracted me to mac and I love the deep detail icons. I am not a fan, at all, of flat design.

I do not have astigmatism but agree with J-Dub, flat design is harder to read, does not help focus my interest on things I am looking on website, it is boring and has no personality. It reminds me dark ages of communist country where everyone wear same dress, same shoes and hat. Some websites are impossible to read with pale text on pale background, it makes a nightmare even for close vision person like myself.
There is one aspect of this sheep trend, it is the money. Big corporations can create more web content for the same bill hiring less experienced graphic designers or let go those artists who were doing extraordinary work using skeuomorphism techniques. Individual website designers do not have to hire graphics artists anymore. With use of Paint they can create and publish their own flat icons, graphs spending minimum money and much less effort to design the website.
I am not buying flat design supporters argument about need to optimize for better browsing efficiency in mobile devices. These evolved drastically in past decade with processor power increased tenfold and more.
We are being pushed by design trend that under false simplicity and convenience blanket, takes us back to dark ages of modern UI design, removing important to human perception contrast and depth from the screen in front of which we spend more our lives day by day. Sad.

Flat design has been to the web what South Park has been to animation – a BIG step backward. The beauty of hi-resolution displays with millions of colors is that you can create evocative imagery. You can convey emotion, tell a story, with both the text and the graphics. The design becomes part of the brand’s overall aesthetic. Flat design websites all look very similar, which is the exact opposite of what you shoot for when building a brand.

This doesn’t mean that the site’s design has to be overly complex. In fact, the most effective company logos tend to favor clean, elegant, simplicity. But when you’re creating a visual environment for someone to navigate through, the ability to use shadows, highlights, reflections, transparency, gradients, and so on, allow you to create a much more interesting a world. They allow you to bring things to the forefront, to make them prominent and indicate importance or urgency. Or, you can push them into the background so they can convey a subliminal message without distracting.

The real world is three dimensions. Depth is what makes the world INTERESTING. It’s why 3D movies (when done right) are so popular. Imagine a Skeumorphic parallax website! Done properly, it could be really special.

Flat design is just a trend like fashion industries, there is no acceptable philosophy behind it. All of a sudden every single application goes flat, why? I personally suffer and have lots of problems as a user. Even Google realized that it’s useless and tries to move back!! Designer should not make the decision this is user’s job. We always listen to our surveys.

I still design my UI’s using skeuomorphism as I believe this crayola UI fad is insulting to my hard work and studies. Only when a client requests a construction paper design do I use it. Screw Microsoft for starting the flat trend and also for the achievements! Making UI designers lazy as well as game designers. Hopefully this fad will blow over and we can go back to being dedicated graphical artists.